Present day providers of multi-media services, such as AT&T, can provide a number of basic services to customers operating various communication devices. For example, some of the basic multi-media services can include Software Defined Network (SDN) telecommunication service and/or toll-free dialing service, which services are communicated over Internet-Protocol (“IP”) Networks to users of IP-based communication devices. Typically, each request for a basic service offering received over the IP Network from one or more of the IP-based communication devices is directed by a switching system to one of a number of different Service Control Points (“SCPs”) or service processors for processing each of the requests.
As providers of multi-media services migrate basic multi-media services from the Legacy 4ESS Switched Network to a Voice over IP architecture, there is a need to support multiple IP-SCPs, which provide a number of multi-media services over the IP architecture. The multiple IP-SCPs each include an IP interface, which is adapted to provide a communication interface to customer logic that provides service processing on a per-call basis for each service request. Further, there is a need to provide an IP-compatible switching device that can support the multiple IP-SCPs and direct the number of requests to any one of the multiple IP-SCPs for processing.